AI tools to assist with Black Friday shopping are more available than ever, and between ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity’s brand-new shopping feature (see below), there are plenty of options for discerning shoppers.
But which is best? I approached each with a request to find the best laptop that would cost $800 or less, and was taken on a journey demonstrating their different approaches to the idea of helping me find the best product and deal. Here’s how each one handled my laptop hunt.
ChatGPT
The Shopping Research feature in ChatGPT reworks the chatbot into a kind of curated shopping concierge. I started by telling ChatGPT I wanted a laptop under $800, and was immediately taken through a series of multiple-choice questions to clarify my interest.
What screen size do I prefer? Do I value battery life over performance? Is portability important, or do I care more about raw power or storage? Do I care about touchscreen or discrete GPU, or primarily basic productivity tasks?
Once I answered, ChatGPT spent a few minutes shopping around. Soon, I got back a tidy buyer’s guide: a handful of laptops under $800 that aligned with my needs, along with pros/cons, trade‑offs, spec comparisons, and approximate current pricing.
I even got a handy chart. Notably, all the links provided went to Best Buy. No Amazon or other deals. And because it’s aggregating across varied sources, pricing and availability are not always perfectly up-to-date, which is something ChatGPT itself warns about.
Gemini
Using Gemini for shopping is easier now that it has access to Google‘s broader shopping ecosystem. Though ChatGPT offers concierge‑level guidance, Google leans hard on scale, depth, and integration with multiple retailers.
The backbone here is Google’s Shopping Graph, which reportedly contains more than 50 billion product listings, continuously updated across a wide range of retailers.
Gemini didn’t ask follow-up questions. Instead, it assumed reasonable defaults and a range of options. There were links to multiple retailers for each item and even details of price history in some cases.
The Gemini research was helpful, but it’s worth saying that Google has a much more complex set of AI-fueled shopping features available. You can search in AI Mode and see deals and price history, and even set up an AI agent to make a purchase on your behalf, depending on the price.
Even searches in the standard Google platform use AI for shopping. Depending on what you look for, you might see a “call‑store” option that leads Gemini to dial local retailers and ask about inventory, promotions, or when a product is in stock.
Perplexity
Perplexity’s shopping-specific AI tools are brand new, but they build off the standard Perplexity AI search experience. The shopping search is set up as a tab option. When you type in what you want, you get back a clean grid of product cards. For my search, the cards showed ratings, price, and standout positive and negative aspects, like whether they could be upgraded.
I appreciated how browsing it felt: familiar, like skimming a well‑designed online store, but with AI‑aware context. I also liked the “instant buy” button, which offered integrated checkout options via partnerships with supported merchants.
Perplexity’s direct purchase options made it more of a hybrid between browsing and buying. That said, one of the first options was above the price point I requested, making the curation of choices seem questionable.
All of the AI assistants had some benefits for helping shop, though I’d hesitate to ignore the more hands-on search methods entirely. I did appreciate the way ChatGPT helped narrow down what I was looking for, and how quick and easy the purchase options through Perplexity worked. The same goes for the depth of Google’s shopping research.
In the end, I might still buy the laptop ChatGPT recommends today, but I’d keep tabs open for Gemini and Perplexity.
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The best business laptops for all budgets
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ESchwartzwrites@gmail.com (Eric Hal Schwartz)
